Do Pediatricians Believe that Transgender Affirmation is Child Abuse?

Do Pediatricians Believe that Transgender Affirmation is Child Abuse?

“The American College of Pediatricians has released an in-depth report stating that the move to indoctrinate children with the idea that they can pick their gender amounts to child abuse.”

This is the opening to a story from the Illinois Family Institute that’s been making the rounds on social media. At first, when I read the headline, I was surprised. It seemed like a very bold statement for a professional organization to make, and so far as I knew the consensus within pediatrics leaned towards gender affirmative treatments. Like most people I have a limited knowledge of what, exactly, all of the major professional organizations for various different branches of medicine are and “The American College of Pediatricians” sounds like a big deal.

It took me about two minutes of digging to realize that they’re not. They’re actually a very small organization (Wikipedia estimates 40 to 200 members) made up of the tiny minority of pediatricians who strongly disagree with the American Association of Pediatrics (an organization with about 62 000 members) on LGBTQ issues. In other words, they’re a lobby group.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve seen this kind of thing happen with Christian lobby groups, and I think it’s basically dishonest. Why? Well, when people see a title like “American College of…” they assume that they’re getting information from a non-partisan professional organization: a group of doctors, scientists, researchers, who have come together to try to find the best, evidence-based approaches to problems that they encounter in their work. Obviously we all realize that there will be politics involved, but the politics will be tempered (at least to some degree) by the presence of people of good will who have no political axe to grind. People who are honestly willing to evaluate the data and for whom patients’ needs trump political agendas.

Organizations of this type have broad-based credibility precisely because they are formed on the basis of profession, not on the basis of conviction. When a group of people who would be much more honestly described as “Pediatricians Against Gay Adoption” assume a title that suggests they are a non-partisan professional organization this misleads people. It’s intended to mislead people. It’s a bid for a kind of credibility that the organization does not have.

The report itself is similar. The term “report” suggests a long document with a lot of citations in it, references to the most up-to-date studies, balanced consideration of the data. If the report is “in-depth” we would expect it to be even more rigorous. This document is neither a report, nor is it “in-depth.” It’s a position statement. Indeed, the ACP’s web-site clearly identifies it as such. Again, there’s a choice of misleading language to give the impression that something which has a fairly low level of authority has a much higher level of authority.

This kind of dishonesty doesn’t actually help the cause. First, because it is transparent (in the Google age, it takes only a minute to ferret out the truth.) Second, because it suggests that the Christian position is desperate: that we’re grasping at fabricated straws, presumably because we have no real evidence or sound argumentation.

In fact there are very good arguments why we should approach the use of hormone blockers with caution. The research is still very preliminary, the diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria have only just been defined for the first time (in DSM-V where GD replaced the older diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder) and it’s very likely that they will require tweaking going forward, we don’t know what long-term effects these medications will have when used to treat GD (they were developed to treat other conditions and have mostly been tested in those contexts), etc.

The problem with these arguments, however, is that they express concerns which are practical and scientific rather than ideological. They leave open the possibility that further research will confirm that inhibiting puberty is safe, that improved diagnosis will allow us to better distinguish which children will actually be best served by these measures, that hormone blockers and gender affirmation produce the best mental health outcomes for youths with gender dysphoria. They leave open the possibility that as the science develops it will come out in favour of a treatment at odds with Culture Wars Christianity.

Pro-family lobby groups don’t want arguments like that. Their concerns are ideological and religious, not scientific and medical. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that in principle: there are important religious and philosophical questions at stake here. But that’s not science. And putting a thin veneer of science on a religious tract does not make it a scientific report, nor does it convince anyone who is not already convinced.

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These studies found that 50 percent of transgender youth attempt suicide. Furthermore, it found these individuals, who suffer from “gender dysphoria,” themselves reported higher rates of drug abuse, unemployment and homelessness.

They note that human sexuality is based on XY or XX genes. “No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex.” The “exceedingly rare” hermaphrodite condition, they clarify, is a distinguishable disorder whereby an abnormal sex organ may grow on an otherwise normal male or female body. These instances “do not constitute a third sex.”

Gender, they relate, is a “sociological and psychological concept” related to an “awareness of themselves as male and female.”

The report asserts, “People who identify as ‘feeling like the opposite sex’ or ‘somewhere in between’ do not comprise a third sex,” and “that after puberty as many as 88% of girls and 98% of boys will eventually accept reality and achieve a state of mental and physical health.”

In their professional opinion, “A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking.”

The organization is urging “educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex.”

Even though conversion therapy helps remove gender confusion in such individuals and report a success rate as high as 80 percent, nevertheless lawmakers are blocking the ability for these individuals to get clinical help.

Four states and one federal district currently ban conversion therapy: California, New Jersey, Oregon, Illinois and the District of Columbia. In Cincinnati, Ohio, the city council recently passed an ordinance fining counselors who try to help a sexually confused teen $200 per day, or $6,000 per month.

New York City recently passed a law whereby a person can be fined up to $250,000 if he fails to address a person according to his preferred gender. States or cities criminalizing psychotherapy meant to explore and treat transgenderism as a mental disorder are being backed by the White House administration.

“God himself is the author of marriage” (GS 48:1). The vocation of marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes (CCC:1603)

Many believe the Freemasons are simply a centuries-old charitable fraternity. However, the Catholic Church has consistently condemned Freemasonry more than any other error in its history because it promotes indifferentism, naturalism, communism, and other dangerous philosophies.

Michael Voris gives a series of short talks, answering questions coming in response to his talk on homosexuality in Nigeria.

In this talk from Nigeria, Michael Voris speaks about the grave evil presented as good – homosexuality. Catechism of Catholic Church teaches that, “Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity (cf. Gen 19:1-29; Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10), tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” (CDF, Persona humana 8). They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved” (CCC: 2357).

Michael Voris talks an in-depth discussion of the true, financial cost of abortion and its effects to the United States. Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that, “The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin. Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being’s right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death” (CDF, Donum vitae III; CCC: 2273).

Contraception & the New Dark Age, Part 1-4: Where we are & How we got here by Dr. Martin Brenner click below:

We are used to thinking of the Rockefellers as simply a byword for wealth, power and financial success. Perhaps we might think of them as determined businessmen or see them as great philanthropists. But the truth is far different; the Rockefeller Foundation is actively undermining the Catholic Church, and in the process, attempting to erase man’s natural orientation to the eternal.

Are the environmental movements and groups simply devoted to laudable, correct stewardship of God’s creation, or do they have a more sinister, hidden agenda? Is “global warming” being used as an excuse for something far darker? Is the final goal of the liberal elites behind the push of junk science population control, eugenics and Gaia worship?

This week on Mic’d Up we’ll be tackling the terrible scourge of Contraception on the Church. Michael Hichborn and Rey Flores from American Life League will join us to expose Catholic Relief Services complicity with Organizations who support contraception and to Discuss The Pill Kills Day of Action 2014. Also joining us will be Lynn Mills who will be discussing the continued prayer rally at Providence Park Hospital in the Archdiocese of Detroit because of their complicity in abortion, contraception and sterilization. Following that same thread we’ll break down the announcement from Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron concerning the crisis of parish closings facing Detroit. Also dropping by will be author James Kalb, to discuss the plague of pluralism on the Church’s Hierarchy.